Macquarie Telecom says it will expand by 50% the capacity of the Canberra data centre "bunker" which is at the heart of its secure services to the federal government.
The expansion of Macquarie Telecom’s "Intellicentre 4 data centre", which first opened in 2014, will begin within weeks and be completed by early 2017.
The telco says it is "the first stage of a plan that could quadruple the centre’s footprint in response to growth in demand for Macquarie’s secure network services offerings to government", according to Macquarie Telecom managing director hosting and government, Aidan Tudehope.
Tudehope added that: “The government’s twin agendas of cloud-first for government computing and the cyber security statement released earlier this year are rapidly changing the face of government computing and communications.”
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Tudehope continued: “As they move to embrace the agility and flexibility of the cloud, more and more agencies are realising that they must ‘bake in’ security from the start.
“Macquarie Telecom’s huge presence in providing secure Internet gateway services to more than a third of government agencies, combined with our government-certified secure cloud services and all-onshore infrastructure, has us perfectly placed to partner with government agencies making this secure transition.
“Macquarie’s cloud facility in Canberra was purpose built to meet these special needs of government clients, and the expansion program is intended to ensure we are able to continue to provide for the growing demand.
“We are now logging about 1.4 billion events and scanning 22 million emails as they enter the federal government environment every month through our Internet gateway,” Tudehope concluded.
The IC4 announcement comes on top of one last month for a contract for up to 2.5MW of capacity more for a Fortune 100 company at the IC2 data centre.
Macquarie plans to finalise building contracts for the first stage expansion of IC4 by the end of August and have builders on site in time to open the expanded facility early in the new year.